‘Safe From Harm’ could easily be a cut from the new Kelela record while the Issac Hayes sample brilliantly employed on ‘One Love’ would make a great centerpiece for a brand new TNGHT track. It’s quite hard to fully summarise the impact that Drexciya have had on electronic music without writing a gushing love letter to Detroit’s finest duo. Released in 2003, this was the debut album by Soulwax members David and Stephen Dewaele, also known as 2ManyDJs.
Cowley devised numerous technical innovations to achieve this dazzling sound.
In its entirety ‘The Album’ embodies the scope and influence of 90s music and is an accurate example of just how prolific Master At Work would become. But with his tales of first time Es, kebab shop fights and neglected loves, Mike Skinner managed to build a bridge between two generations of British ravers.
In 1990 their 'Mr Kirk's Nightmare' marked the shift from summers of love into hardcore, and month by month 4 Hero, Dego's Tek 9 and Mac's Manix pseudonym, and their Reinforced label expressed the extremes of darkness and euphoria as the breaks sped up and things got ever gnarlier.
It was an overwhelming period of extremes and excess; vodka Red Bull was outselling lager, DJs were becoming mega-rich superstars and Mitsubishi pills were making clubland intensely emotional. And, seven years later, it passes the ultimate litmus test – sounding as future-proof now as it did back when it first landed. Suicide's eponymous 1977 album feels as fresh and red raw as a recently acquired hangover: it pounds in your brain from storming opening track ‘Ghost Rider’.
It's 1988 and the name on the street is Jack. It was a gateway, Guy and Howard the pied pipers who led many toward the light. For without the Scroggins sisters, there would be no LCD Soundsystem, Rapture or Le Tigre. Mills showed an intense focus in his pursuit of stripped-back techno trips. Heads will side-eye the classic house and garage motifs on ‘Settle’ but the album represents the peak of the UK house explosion that started with ‘Battle For Middle You’ in 2011 and ended with ‘House Every Weekend’ in 2015. "My name is Raskit, listen to my slang," Dizzee directs us on 'Cut 'Em Off'.
Stinson’s untimely passing in 2002 is still hard pill to swallow, especially when electro’s sound and also recent surge in popularity is largely down to his work. Whatever your preference, we've been truly spoiled and when it comes to albums, there have been some true cornerstones of relevance that have not only got us dancing, but inspired and influenced the next wave of artists to bring forth something, new, exciting and progressive.
It’s somewhat comical that one of the most influential albums for ambient music and acid was recorded on a cassette that was damaged by a cat, therefore giving the original pretty poor sound quality. He's banging the future out of his keys.
A breakthrough commercial success for deadmau5, 2010’s ‘4×4=12’ (his fifth effort) represented what many consider to be his best album to date from the Daft-Punk-influenced ‘Animal Rights’ to the ultimate deadmau5 anthem ‘Raise Your Weapon’. Goldie – ‘Timeless’ (FFRR Records, 1995). It’s a sound that has been replicated overtly by artists such as Com Truise and Tycho, became one of many basis’ of influence for internet subgenre vaporwave and has inspired many an ambient producer working today. Soul, Detroit techno, electronica, spiritual jazz, and sampling technology pushed way beyond its capabilities all orbited their singular vision creating something that – though moments can sound very much of their time thanks to that sampler abuse – still stands up as one of the most ambitious dance records ever made. Its influence can be traced to all those who have attempted to push the boundaries of dance music, filtering into the work of Fever Ray, MIA, Gorillaz, and even the electronic-influenced rock of Alt-J and These New Puritans.
Plastikman would go on to other creative heights but ‘Sheet One’ remains Hawtin’s opening shot and his meisterwerk. But they were also masters of an instant hook: the blissful ‘Stella’ (included here) had broken out across all scenes, and hinted at huge commercial potential.
The Streets – ‘Original Pirate Material’ (Locked On/679, 2002).
It came three years into Photek's career, in which he'd carved a reputation for producing apocalyptic tracks like 'The Seven Samurai' or hyper-percussive classics like 'Consciousness'. 2’ features 45 remixed tracks from the likes of Dolly Parton, Basement Jaxx and Kylie Minogue.
Without Summer (and other contemporaries, like Kraftwerk), making this sequencer-led machine-made music, we wouldn't have techno, or most other subsequent dance music. If there was a ranking of electronic albums that had soundtracked the most comedowns, ‘Selected Ambient Works’ would be near the top. Where his peers borrowed from disco, the southside Chicagoan borrowed from jazz and in the process created timeless tunes that still absolutely bang in the club. On the face of it, it was a nod to the dance music world that had come before them but it would go on to write dance music's future. The album has soundtracked many of my morning-after meanderings and scrambled article writings.
The past year was maybe the most astonishing yet for electronic music, full of marquee triumphs and troubles, from the sold-out arena spectacles of Swedish House Mafia to the massive Electric Zoo in New York City, which might've been the festival's largest iteration had it not been cancelled midway thru after the MDMA-related deaths of two revelers. Harrison Williams. He ain't wrong. Layer upon layer of echo and tape hiss, microscopic surface details made dramatic, and vast waves of bass: it sounded both completely alien and like it had always been there. Today, the legacy of ‘Untrue’ remains as bold and brilliant as ever. Even his constant revising of analogue compositions seemed to predict the age of production software tweaks and folders of Ableton files titled ‘Version 87 final (V3 edit)’. ‘Minus’ is the anxiety-drenched highlight while cuts like ‘Multiple Silence’ and ‘Home’ showcase alien gurgles alongside clinical progression. Thomas and Guy-Man (then only 21 and 22) created The Album That Changed The World. Then there’s the campy synth line of ‘Tribulations’, the disco glitz of ‘On Repeat’ and the manic percussion of ‘Thrills’, all coming together to inject a much-needed dose of attitude into NYC’s then flagging dance music scene. Described by Mary Anne Hobbs last year as, “Avant-garde, timeless”, ‘Untrue’ is a classic piece of dance music history. Although our initial review was unfavourable, Skrillex has gone on to prove us wrong. Skrillex – ‘Bangarang EP’. The world is full nowadays of drones, dreamscapes and beatless sound sculptures – but whatever they may present themselves as, chances are they've got a little of this in them. 'An Electric Storm' is hardly pop: it's a brilliant and demented melange of easy listening, cosmic sex scenes, occult weirdness and synthesiser swooshes, in one sense pure Austin Powers 60s kitsch, in another utterly futuristic. DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing.....’ is more than simply an album, it’s a journey through sonic experimentation and musical creativity. In 1993 Richie Hawtin was a nerdy, shaven-headed, bespectacled DJ at the start of his career. With label DFA the hub for this new, ferocious and unhinged take on dance music, LCD Soundsystem took centre stage with their self-titled debut album. The LP’s title-track also contains a production trick wherein the bass drum is momentarily cut out before returning in full force for some added kick - a technique later popularised as “the drop” and repackaged in sterile, commercial releases that are a million miles from the revolutionary vitality of ‘Menergy’. Joe Muggs. Suicide's trademark use of minimalist electronic instrumentation not only helped birth post-punk, but electronic music also.
Arca probably falls more in this category than anyone else and has been sculpting a beautifully-jagged and urgent sound for the last five years.
They’ve become regular collaborators with Radiohead man Thom Yorke in recent years. From the bando-inspired bars of ‘Cut Up Bag’ to Mother’s Day anthem ‘You Raised Me’, Giggs showed early on how versatile he was as a lyricist, and indeed how important a genre UK rap would go on to be. It was a statement album and plenty listened and learned. The engrave of Jam City’s stylistic direction has been conspicuous throughout the wave of ‘deconstructed’ club music that has followed.
Paul Oakenfold – ‘Tranceport’ (Kinetic, 1998). Fearlessly innovative, Arthur Russell laid the groundwork for genre boundaries and simultaneously broke them before they existed. From the Summer Of Love, where acid house and ecstasy reigned supreme, to the birth of techno in light of political and social oppression. But ‘Menergy’ arrived before Cowley’s diagnosis, and provides a dynamic snapshot into the freewheeling, unabashed energy that partying and then house music were built on.
The scope of the record is magnificent. Donna Summer – ‘I Remember Yesterday’ (Casablanca, 1977)
Somehow, though, Andre Williams aka Shy FX, though still not even legally allowed into clubs as he slipped in under the wire in September of '95, managed the impossible and condensed all that junglist energy into a full-length album. But Worrell takes it even further, subtly at first, then on ‘Flash Light’ with total abandon. But there’s also the proto-techno of ‘Metal On Metal’ and the luscious ten minute beauty of ‘Europe Endless’. Headed up by JaJa Soze, their stylings were heavily inspired by the hood realities of NYC in the late ‘90s, and would later birth a grime crew by the name of Roadside G’s. It was a sound that acted as a militant rebellion in a heated Detroit, one that was brimming with racial tension and social injustice.